A doctor who has been struck off by the General Medical Council for exploiting vulnerable multiple sclerosis sufferers, including a man from Bromsgrove, could be facing legal action by hundreds of patients throughout the UK.

A doctor who has been struck off by the General Medical Council for exploiting vulnerable multiple sclerosis sufferers, including a man from Bromsgrove, could be facing legal action by hundreds of patients throughout the UK.

Solicitors Leigh Day & Co said it was looking into the possibility of seeking compensation for potentially "hundreds" of MS and spinal cord injury patients who travelled to Rotterdam to receive stem cell treatment from Dr Robert Trossel.

Jill Paterson, solicitor at the firm, said: "We support the GMC's findings today that Dr Trossel is no longer fit to practise in the UK. We are actively investigating the pursuit of legal proceedings against him to right the wrongs caused to these vulnerable people."

One of Dr Trossel's patients chartered accountant Malcolm Pear, from Bromsgrove, visited the doctor at his Rotterdam clinic in January 2006.

His wife Lesley, who gave up her job as a sales director to care for him, remembers going to Eindhoven on the advice of Trossel, where they underwent "completely bizarre" Aqua Tilis treatment.

Mrs Pear said her husband, now 56, had shown initial signs of improvement by leaving his wheelchair and walking that night and the next day.

But she said within two to three months, his condition deteriorated and the situation is now "very grim". She said she would "love" to sue "greedy" Trossel.

The news of the possible legal action comes after Dr Trossel, 56, was struck off the medical register at the conclusion a long-running disciplinary hearing in central London into his involvement with MS sufferers.

The Dutch-trained doctor was found to have given false hope to vulnerable patients desperate for a cure, charging them thousands of pounds for "pointless" and "unjustifiable" stem cell treatments.

Prof Brian Gomes da Costa, chairman of the GMC fitness to practise panel, told Dr Trossel he had done "lasting harm" to patients and had "abused the position of trust" afforded to him as a doctor

He said: "You have exploited vulnerable patients and their families. You have given false hope and made unsubstantiated and exaggerated claims to patients suffering from degenerative and devastating illnesses."

Five were injected between August 2004 and August 2006 at his Rotterdam clinic with a substance said to contain stem cells and two of the patients, along with another MS patient, were advised by Dr Trossel to undergo a treatment called Aqua Tilis therapy (AQT)- described by one as "completely bizarre" - involving "antioxidant steam" with "magnetic fields made from generators".